The present invention relates to a biometrics device, and more particularly to a vein authentication device which authenticates individuals by use of venous information obtained by sweeping finger veins.
Development of authentication devices as a technique for authenticating individuals by use of biometric information is making progress, and such devices are now coming into practical use in PCs, mobile terminals, automatic telling machines (ATMs) and automobiles. The working principle of vein authentication devices is that a living body is irradiated with near infrared rays, and the rays which are scattered within the body and later transmitted outside the body are formed into a biometric image. As hemoglobin in the blood absorbs near infrared rays, it emerges in the formed image as a dark shadowy pattern, and thereby enables veins to be recognized as such shadowy patterns. A vein authentication device authenticates an individual by computing the correlation between the imaged pattern and a pertinent pattern in biometric information images registered in advance.
Known vein authentication devices as such include, for instance, those disclosed in JP-A-253989/2005 (Patent Reference 1) and JP-A-235049/2005 (Patent Reference 2).
Conventional vein authentication devices inevitably have to be structured in larger dimensions than the living objects because of the need to acquire overall information on the objects to be measures. However, larger authentication devices are correspondingly more costly and may be restricted in mounting convenience. Therefore, more compact vein authentication devices are called for.